DOJ Finds UCLA Medical School Used Illegal Race-Based Admissions

The Justice Department has concluded UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine engaged in illegal race-based discrimination in admissions, favoring Black and Hispanic applicants over White and Asian peers.

The finding follows a yearlong Civil Rights Division investigation opened after a lawsuit by the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, and it marks a new escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity-based admissions practices. DOJ officials say UCLA intentionally sought more minority students on the theory that minority patients fare better with minority doctors, but that this resulted in admitted Black and Hispanic students having significantly lower average GPAs and MCAT scores than White and Asian admits in the 2023 and 2024 cohorts.

Investigators cited internal documents in which the executive director of admissions outlined ways to meet "diversity goals" and warned that denying admission to Black and Hispanic students could lead to deaths among future patients of color. They also highlighted a PREview exam question asking applicants if they were part of a marginalized group, which DOJ said was designed to elicit racial information for admissions decisions.

DOJ criticized UCLA's "holistic" model, which includes factors such as race, national origin, sexual orientation, citizenship and "distance travelled." The department has not yet announced specific remedial steps or penalties, but the finding is expected to fuel wider legal challenges to DEI-driven admissions at other elite medical schools.